Olympic Silver Medallist Scott Steele on what top boats do that others don't...

[00:00:09] Well hello and welcome to one more episode of Sailfaster, which is the podcast for those who obsess about sailing their boat faster than anyone else. Today actually we are very privileged to be in a sail loft in Annapolis with our distinguished guest Scott Steele,

[00:00:26] who is a professional sailor, coach and sail consultant for a whole range of brands, international, national and local sail brands. So Scott, hello. Glad you could join us. Well, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Great to have you. For those that don't know Scott,

[00:00:43] which is probably quite a small list, Scott's a very accomplished competitive sailor with an incredibly long list of accolades that go back to his windsurfing days and before. So Scott, why don't you give us a quick buyer? Okay, well chronologically I'm going to

[00:01:00] go back to my youth and I was quite privileged and lucky to have two brothers that were older than me that were quite good sailors and by the time I was 10 years old I was racing my own boat

[00:01:14] and over the years I also was able to take the helm of our family boat and raced in Morse. And then they came out with the the ton cup racing and I got involved in a program when I

[00:01:32] was age 16 with the three-quarter ton cup worlds that what had happened to be here in Annapolis. So I got brought onto a boat, the owner was skippering and didn't do well first few races

[00:01:46] and he turned the helm over to me so I felt pretty lucky to be able to sail against some unbelievable sailors and be on the helm of this brand new custom three-quarter tonner and

[00:01:59] did pretty well. It was a great experience for me and kind of you know boosted me in a lot of different ways so that went well but I was at that point I had also owned a laser, I was all of 125

[00:02:13] pounds racing a full rig laser so and I've always told people that really that's when I became a good boat handler you know because when you're that light and you're sailing a boat that's

[00:02:27] that powerful when it's windy you better be good or else you're swimming. The wind was under 10, I was golden and our fleets back then were 75 boats so I could do me in the top five in these

[00:02:38] regattas quite often when the wind stayed light but what I realized over over time was I had to get better and what I wasn't good at and that worked well for me down the road and later in my

[00:02:52] life working on my deficiencies so that is something I've always told people and when I coach people that sailing dinghies and you know in windsurfing and all that find out what you're weak at and work on those because what's the point of working on something you're already confident

[00:03:11] and you're already doing well with so that makes sense. Yeah, it's actually I just makes me think how many weaknesses I have when it comes to sailings. So much to work on but you after that you

[00:03:26] you're very well known for windsurfing, weren't you? One of the top windsurfers in the US if not the world. Right so I got into windsurfing now I go back to how I ended up on a windsurfer

[00:03:37] I went to St. Mary's College and joined the sailing team there and I helped build their team at the time as a freshman and a sophomore. We had a small team but we were doing better. Finally

[00:03:53] got a friend of mine to transfer from the University of Maryland his name is Monty Spindler and he was quite a good laser sailor. He came in and we were able to put St. Mary's little

[00:04:06] St. Mary's on the map against some schools that had been you know powerhouses in college sailing in the US. Monty and I windsurfed a lot together but Jeff Kennedy came along and he sailed my other division I still sail with him to this day on his battalion 1498.

[00:04:28] What Jeff and I did a lot of was we did a lot of windsurfing at the school and when they named this the sport an Olympic sport I had just graduated from St. Mary's College so it all

[00:04:40] worked out to go into that so US sailing put together a regatta that was going to be a qualifier and happened to be here in Annapolis I think we had 75 competitors show up and we sailed on the

[00:04:50] windsurfer there was not enough wing glider and everybody came from all over the country to try to qualify for the US. I didn't win that event but I got second place

[00:05:03] and qualified for the US team but I had taken this job with Mark Lindsey and ML Imports so I had to pass on being part of the team when they went to the European championships in Lake Garda

[00:05:16] but the good thing there was that my brother who had just missed by one on the to make the team now could be on the team. So you picked your brother for the team and then because you dropped

[00:05:28] he got on. He got on exactly yeah yeah so that that was good it was a little payback to him because he's the one who got me into the sport in the first place. After that the US sailing said they

[00:05:40] would save some money for me to go to the Worlds which later that summer actually I think it was in the fall of 1981 that I went to Palomo Spain racing the World Championships the

[00:05:54] Winglider World Championships. The summer we trained a little bit and I got ready to go to Europe and went over there, raced in Palomos about 120 boards on the starting line

[00:06:10] and I got fourth. I was fairly new to the board never really raced in any big events at that point I think we'd only sailed and you know trained together in about eight boards

[00:06:21] in the Winglider so I didn't know what to expect. Wow I didn't know if it was going to be you know the hundredth, fortieth or in this case always fourth. But presumably you'll sail it I mean wind

[00:06:31] service is different obviously than from a dinghy or certainly a three-quarter tonneau right but presumably what you your experience in I would say real sailing but it was real sailing must have helped with oh absolutely if not handling certainly tactics and right so that

[00:06:46] it it brings back a memory that the head of US sailing then of the Olympic sailing group Sam Merrick he's always said he said you know it's so great to have you as the sailor sailing in

[00:07:03] our you know competing for our windsurpers you know but then there was a there was a little group of us that came out of sailing yeah and we were tactical sailors so when I got over to

[00:07:14] a big event like in Europe I wasn't intimidated you know I mean I was worried because I didn't know how I was going to do didn't know if I was good enough board handler I knew I could sail well

[00:07:28] but could I put myself in a position to be able to so I you know I got good start sailed the course and played you know attention to the shifts and and that's what works for me

[00:07:42] because some of the other guys that were I was sailing against even though they were amazing windsurpers and on the wing glider they were incredible but they would not always be on the lifted tech yeah so

[00:07:52] that's that's why I did as well as I did you know I still had a lot of work to do on the wing glide they had been sailing them for a while and but to finish forth was it was quite an

[00:08:02] accomplishment yeah that was probably one of my best forgot is you know looking back early on in my you know windsurfing career so after returning from the world championships in 1981 just trained some in Florida with the US team and the next year 82 I did various events I did

[00:08:26] quite well in some events I won the American Championships in the windsurfer and started getting more time on the wing glider so I was doing still doing a little bit of both I actually

[00:08:37] won the 1983 windsurfer as we got into 1984 I continued to you know train hard in Florida and whenever I could go do major events we had the US trials in June of 1984 I won the trials

[00:08:54] and only one per country goes so that was up to that point was probably the hardest event for me because second place was no good but I did get my choice of tuning partners after that and put

[00:09:08] together a tuning campaign with Bruce Kendall who is from New Zealand we trained in Corpus Christi Texas I had talked about working on your weaknesses yeah Corpus Christi Texas in May in June of 1984

[00:09:23] were quite it was quite windy so we were both a little smaller we had to train enough all the other competitors from Europe and so forth we're all over Long Beach California training

[00:09:36] every day and while we were in Corpus Christi we worked hard for about two weeks with our training partners and we got significantly better in big Greece so to this day I've always always coached

[00:09:53] the first thing I find out from someone I get on the boat with is what do you think your weaknesses are we got to work on those because if you get those annual it can work on the rest of it

[00:10:04] it was we built up to the Olympics I read an interesting article in sports illustrated that said that that it was going to be dominated by the Europeans and you know that was it was quite

[00:10:18] interesting because I'd done three world championships and I finished fourth eighth and ninth in the world championships in the wing glider and there was 120 competitors and now we boil it down

[00:10:33] to 40s but they didn't give me it was a little fuel for fire oh they wrote your chances off before you even started yeah yeah the expert wrote this big article and uh and I kept it in my bag or on

[00:10:48] my wall so it reminded me I had to show whoever wrote this article that was not going to be the so what happened was we started off I started off quite well and the wing was a little on the

[00:11:01] lighter side so I had actually won two of the first four races oh wow and yeah it was winning the regatta over a five-time world champion in wing gliders that was Stefan van der Berg from Holland

[00:11:14] oh yeah so um yeah he's he was definitely legend and he he was the one to beat and there was no sports illustrator said I wasn't going to beat him I said yeah you're probably right but um

[00:11:25] but I gave him a run and so races five six and seven it got a windier and um I was down a little bit I think I finished off the regatta with a seven nine and a 14 but I had already had a nice a nice

[00:11:41] padding for the earlier races and I was able to manage to hang on second obviously Stefan van der Berg very impressive he went on and won the gold and the the neat part was that Bruce Kendall my

[00:11:57] friend I'm training partner he was third yeah so we both won medals we both you know out shined you know what some people's expert yeah getting back into sailing was um was something I knew

[00:12:11] I would do eventually I kind of wanted to you know run the string out of all my competitive options in in windsurfing I um I did well I did go to the Goodwill Games in 1990 so I won that

[00:12:25] trials to do that and got a silver medal a matter of fact from that I also got the US sportsmanship they they picked me out because I witnessed for the guy from Poland

[00:12:38] that beat me in the Goodwill Games um that he was tossed out in the last race and I would have won the regatta and I went to the jury and the protest hearing and said you got it

[00:12:52] wrong he they he was over early but he was quite good on his board and he spun around the pin end so quick that they didn't know that he cleared himself I was right next to him I saw the whole

[00:13:04] there was uh in the heat of the competitive moment that was that was a good thing to do it was the only thing to because if I had not done anything and then he ended up getting

[00:13:12] disqualified what would that gold medal mean to me because I would know I really didn't serve there's probably a lot of people who would have just accepted I'm sure there's plenty of people

[00:13:21] have told me he's like oh I don't think many people would have done what you did I said well I hope they would have but that's great you know anyway to get back to my point

[00:13:29] of getting in the sealant so after the 92 trials I didn't win them I you know it was still you know did coach some of the windsurfing up to 96 but at that point I had to um

[00:13:40] to get back into you know work because my first child was born 1991 and I um so the first thing I did was I liked coaching I went and became a college coach at Georgetown University yeah yeah I saw that

[00:13:56] when you in 1993 I did that for five years and I did a little bit I did a lot less sailing only because I had my little kids at this point I had a first one born in 91 next one was born

[00:14:07] in 93 then I had one in 95 and then I had finally a daughter in 1997 and uh and I had a fifth child in 2003 wow but so I have five kids yeah but so that that kind of took me out of uh off the

[00:14:23] tiller yeah but what it did is it put me it put me on the coach boat though after I came back from paternity leave raising children in 2010 I joined this sailing loft and um I started

[00:14:36] sailing sails to uh to racers to cruisers as well but it put me in a different arena and I started coaching a little bit on the side for these customers if I could bring somebody from the back

[00:14:50] of the fleet to the middle of the fleet it was like victory I wasn't one of the guys that had been in this keelboat coaching thing for years and years so there was a lot of people that

[00:14:59] I learned from then it's kind of ran into an opportunity to race some things that some races that I had never done before and this is so it takes it's very interesting for me to race these

[00:15:11] events because you got to be uh navigating um the big picture in looking at the weather patterns that are going to be here tomorrow not what's going on you know on the race course that

[00:15:22] out so um I've thoroughly enjoyed it doing Chicago Mac races was uh also you know a great opportunity for me and I enjoyed that you know twice with the Commodore Chicago Yacht Club you

[00:15:36] know so it was uh it's great to be asked by some people that are you know like you know they realized I had something to offer them and uh that it wasn't just a windsurfer I was actually

[00:15:46] not so bad at sailing either I'm looking after the window behind you here but and just a reminder we're in a working sail off so you can hear uh what's that like cutting and

[00:15:55] running going on behind us so this past weekend you mentioned that I as uh racing the melds 15 down in jensen beach Florida we had 95 competitors so uh white a competitive event and I've even

[00:16:08] been in a fleet like that since um I did the 2004 J22 Worlds and it was 150 but they weren't all on the same on the line at the same time so you have to go all the way back to my windsurfing days

[00:16:21] to have 90 over 90 you know boats on the line at the same time how do you think so it was a challenge Gallowindy I did I did fine but I won race I didn't do so fine and I I learned something from it so

[00:16:35] I'm going to take my uh put my coaching hat on for a minute yeah and uh and say that hey you could still make mistakes no matter what your background is I made a big one I came into

[00:16:45] the windward mark um uh tack under the under the starboard line of boats so I barely snuck in there luckily I didn't foul anybody but it left me uh low at uh coming around the um the top and to the

[00:17:00] offset I was uh had boats above me and of course we went to the offset mark and we immediately put the spinnaker up then fill immediately the guy above me it got his up a little quicker

[00:17:11] and um and he rolled rolled me so what happened you got a 95 boat fleet there's a ton of boats behind him and there's a train set up and you've stalled at this point I have stalled and I can't

[00:17:24] head up I have very little speed and even though it's blowing about 15 uh and they were all planing off at you know 11 12 knots on the uh meldus 15 I was sitting there so that the

[00:17:36] train went over me and over me and over me until I got you know sort of disillusioned and figured I had to get out of there so I jibed the train forms a wall of spinnakers going from

[00:17:48] the offset mark down that reaching leg so even when you jib there's no wind getting through I still couldn't get up on a plane I'm still going like four or five knots that was my speed

[00:18:00] they're going over 10 so lost 40 boats what would you have done differently the um I might back if I was in a coach boat watching somebody do this this is what I would tell them

[00:18:09] you're low on the on your on your line here you've got a whole you know train of boats just above you don't put the spinnaker up when you're at the offset mark keep going being point so the

[00:18:18] guy that is right overlapped with you to winward then puts his spinnaker up and ducks below he's gonna peel down he's gonna peel down and go go below you and now you're high at the

[00:18:27] group now you can put your spinnaker up and I'm the highest boat yeah clean air the whole way so the the rest of the the next two were gotten you know races after that race that disaster

[00:18:38] the uh that's what I did you need a coach I needed a coach I needed a coach the coach what are you doing it's comforting to know that you know somebody of your expertise still

[00:18:50] finds themselves in those situations where you think oh how much of them oh yeah good others so interesting stuff so Scott let's let's talk about coaching right now do you see big

[00:18:59] differences between the top boats and those mid fleet uh sort of when you step on a boat do you instantly think oh yeah this is a very competitive boat just because of the way the team talks to

[00:19:12] you whatever it is versus when you step onto maybe a yes I'm fortunate enough to be able to step on top boats mid fleet boats and the fleet boats and there is a difference between them

[00:19:26] the uh the top fleet guys that I get to sail with on occasion have everybody on their crew organized and they basically their knowledge of their position on the boat is 100 percent there they're a top notch you know why is that because they go out and they practice

[00:19:46] and they work with the sailors if they have to replace um a crew they usually are able to replace an equal with a member that's not because they've kind of moved to the top and of course

[00:20:02] top sailors want to sail with other top sailors and um and they're able to um you know groom these these sailors to be um able to help the program and uh yeah Ray Wolf talked about this in one of

[00:20:20] the early uh early podcasts for sail faster where he talked about introducing uh additional um you know new members integrating them and starting to learn with them so that he had quite a large roster which I felt was critical right the the large roster is critical um

[00:20:39] and those top boats have it they uh when you bring in a replacement you bring in a basically equal if you don't bring in an equal you your entire crew are the coaches for this person

[00:20:50] that might need a little coaching on the boat so it it all works so Ray Wolf and when he brings on someone who isn't an ace they would have him and all his other crew as aces and there's

[00:21:02] all of a sudden they have six coaches yeah you know what I mean as a being a new member on that so one so one big difference then is is I love that idea of uh um if you if some key

[00:21:13] month you've got make it you've got somebody else slotting slotting in with no with no gap in ability right if you if you if you you know you slot in somebody that's a brand is new to sailing

[00:21:24] they would be coached up by the you know the the skipper but more importantly by the other crew members got it got it what else one of the differences do you do you recall you know

[00:21:35] when I'm on um uh boats that are mid fleet or lower in the fleet they um they typically have a good sailor or two on board um but they don't have the whole package and there's a lot of uh

[00:21:52] diversion of um of attention to help and tell me your crew do the right thing so as a skipper this is the last thing you want and I've done this before and uh and you know I sail at 335 for a little

[00:22:05] while we just bring my friends along and he hadn't been racing that much and it was all of a sudden I'm finding myself having to not pay attention what I'm doing but coaching them you have to

[00:22:16] drive the boat and do what you have to do and if there's a crew member or two on board that are very knowledgeable they can work with these other new members while you're trying to drive

[00:22:27] the boat and uh and be the skipper that makes sense so um that uh they're able to divert their attention a little bit better without the whole thing falling apart so if in every way when the time comes when

[00:22:40] you have to interpret new people or when you're toward a people then I like that notion of if you're the skipper you're or you're helming it then you need to delegate that responsibility

[00:22:50] and just let somebody else on your crew do that so you can focus on on boat speed right well exactly exactly because the skipper has to be focused yeah as soon as he takes his focus off

[00:23:00] what he's supposed to be doing it it falls apart in a hurry okay and um so I had an opportunity to sail with the rovin sins uh on their j105 early on when they first got the boat and there was a

[00:23:12] couple of missing pieces in the crew um they were also new to the boat so they were still trying to learn how to make the boat go fast so what we worked on was obviously the crew work

[00:23:24] super important but also now we got to get this boat to be faster because you get your boat to be faster and all of a sudden you're a lot smarter because um as you know if if you can you know

[00:23:36] keep your lane in a big fleet um with good boat speed then you're going to be able to race your race and not how someone else takes you to race so scott when you when you're coaching

[00:23:48] presumably there are major incremental changes in boat speed that you can demonstrate you can coach and so on and as they get better and better there must be smaller and smaller incremental changes but they're still adding to boat speed just big assumption probably but no there is um

[00:24:06] it's easy to get the first level up so um you're maybe making obvious mistakes I get on the boat it's like oh you got to do this and you got to do that and you know maybe it has something to do

[00:24:17] with the way you're uh trimming the main or the jib um you know maybe it's your um you know placement of the people on the boat um and we figure those things out then

[00:24:30] as you get better it gets a little tougher to find the little increments of boat speed that you can gather one would be obviously the trim of the boat first off is the rig is all the rig

[00:24:42] correct because I have gotten on some of the j105s and measured their their boat and I said have you ever measured this before no um when I first got new new sales the the person who delivered the

[00:24:56] sales to me took a look at it and I assumed it was all good well we one boat instance we found it was two inches difference you know and we in in what the the headstay the headstay yeah yeah so we

[00:25:08] fixed that little things like that that you might not you might be getting all the crew work going and everything looks good but you're still don't think you're up to speed it might be

[00:25:16] something as simple as that it's like okay well I didn't really measure that so um that's uh end up being important the you know are you are you doing any inhauling you know um some people

[00:25:28] I've gotten on the boats and was like well we don't really feel comfortable with that the trimmer you know has dried it but it never seemed to work and so because it's going to be different

[00:25:39] in different conditions you know you're going to inhaul you know the jib in some cases and maybe other times not not so much um or you know maybe you um are around other boats and

[00:25:51] you need to foot a little bit to keep your lane you don't need to you know point up underneath someone and and then other times you know you want to put it in point mode and maybe you

[00:26:02] got to change your main you got a you know trim it so the you know the leech is a little a little bit tighter it's forcing a little bit of weather helm in the boat in the boat and

[00:26:11] keeps you honest as a skipper to drive the boat up and so you don't fall into somebody it might be in front of you maybe you can sacrifice a little bit of speed and how you do that and make

[00:26:21] it work for you you know so those little things we go over yeah changing gears um is obviously a key thing you need to learn and changing gears is not as simple as just pointing slightly out

[00:26:32] or footing off it's the whole crew changing from say you know speed mode to point mode or the other the other way around that takes a lot of coordination right yeah and it's a good thing to

[00:26:43] let the people know it's like the guy above us is higher and faster first off you know is it something else that's going on so we're maybe tell the crew to you know take a look at some stuff um and maybe

[00:26:56] there's something obvious maybe there isn't or maybe your way placement on the boat is too far forward or too far back um and little things like that but presume assume the top boats

[00:27:06] when you're on top there are they doing this about even really talking to each other or i think that the top boats it's the um the skipper maybe the main sheet or also might be the tactician

[00:27:19] and maybe the jib trimmer so those those three are all one two and three from the back of the boat so they're the easiest ones to talk to and those three might be able to solve everything

[00:27:30] maybe the jib hires not tight enough you know so obviously the um any one of the three probably would recognize that but maybe someone on the rail would say hey you know we got wrinkles all up on

[00:27:41] the long the left of the jib so you know have the jib trimmer fix that and uh maybe the wind changed maybe maybe you need to move the position for the jib track back one or forward one to

[00:27:52] get a little bit you know more power or less power you know if you wanted to put a little twist in the jib pull the track back a little bit you know maybe the helm's going to be easier time

[00:28:03] so top boats again top boats versus mid-fleet what else are you seeing that's different um besides the the crew work working like a well oiled machine the skipper who's driving the boat and to become

[00:28:18] a well tuned skipper takes a lot of hours on the water and a lot of hours training with somebody that's better than you and faster than you and uh when you get an opportunity to do some of that

[00:28:30] you might now say okay we made some changes because we were you know he was going higher and faster we finally got that is the same height as him but now he's a little bit faster now you didn't

[00:28:41] need make some other changes to be a little faster and now all of a sudden you found your now how are you gonna do that you know um you know in the race when you got other boats

[00:28:49] around you know maybe you're trying to keep your lane and you're sometimes you know you really can't so this is all about practice and and you know going out with someone in practicing

[00:29:02] is probably the number one thing you could do besides I could get on your boat and we could go out without anybody around us and we can make some changes and do it they really are they

[00:29:11] really working or not we don't know for sure um until you get next to somebody maybe you get someone like ray wolf you know you get next to ray he's fast you know smart knows he knows

[00:29:23] the boats you know well now even though he's been in him just a short period of time he has done all the right things to train himself and his crew up to be a well-owned machine yeah

[00:29:35] but those who don't know um quick commercial for sail faster we have ray wolf uh as I think episode two of the sail faster series so can you can you talk about any specific improvements that you've

[00:29:47] seen in uh that drive the drive boat speed improvements for you recently yes boat speed obviously is number one and we've got to figure out how to achieve you know top speed in the fleet or

[00:30:00] equal top speed the things that I have discovered over time and this is following a lot of a lot of boats um taking pictures I'm looking at the top boats and looking at the middle of the fleet

[00:30:14] or lower end of the fleet and you from behind the boat I see different things we'll go to the main right now certain wind conditions you want to have a nice open leech um you bring the traveler up

[00:30:24] you use the sheet a little bit so lightish winds with light winds with chop you want you want some kids some twist out of the main you want to you know go ahead and you know bring the

[00:30:34] bring the traveler up some and ease it get your get your power going um and then match your jib you know to that so um and make sure that the slot in the between the main and the jib is

[00:30:48] is working together um which as a coach I go back and take those pictures too you know so the we had the the the quantum guys did that they did some video of us and I think they

[00:30:58] showed our boat as being an example of how not for the top of it so so much because I think we were we were trimming it the sails individually rather than as a pair and as soon as we changed

[00:31:09] that we seem to point higher better speed so they have to work as a pair the the main and the jib are working together obviously um if uh if the jib is not matching um the basically all

[00:31:25] these do is you look up the leeches of the two sails and maybe um it's even good for your jib trimmer to get out of the cockpit go back and see where you know how the main looks and then you

[00:31:38] know and then tuck down and look and see how his jib is is matching it and if it's uh if it's out of whack the sails two tails aren't going to work well together um and you might play with

[00:31:49] it a little bit you know as um if you find here a little bit slow um you know maybe maybe your leech in your jib is is too tight and uh and it's uh you know you're back winning

[00:32:00] the main or um so match those two up uh and when you have a jib boat not a genoa boat it's generally going to be the case that your jib will be likely be trimmed a little bit too tight on the leech

[00:32:19] and that is that's a common you mean that's typically that's a common theme because people are are trimming the two sails individually and you trim it to a point where you have that jib that looks

[00:32:30] just right well exactly might look great but you know what the main stream trim this way and then if you if you're you as the drip shimmer come up and look at the main he's like wow there's a lot of

[00:32:40] a lot of openness up up top here and a lot of twist um and then you go back and look at the jib and it's there's not the same twist you know so so typically that's something you'll spot

[00:32:51] straight away something you spot what else what else do you typically spot straight away that maybe on on the top boat right yep check the box they got that they've got the curves right got that

[00:33:01] right so the other thing is you know the conditions on the water are always changing you know and um you might go through a point in the race where you need to have uh more twists in your sails

[00:33:13] but maybe all of a sudden it's you know get into a flat zone maybe you've gone somewhere where there's the the currents changed you've gotten away from where there's power boats or whatever it

[00:33:22] might be and there's all dead flat water well dead flat water sails can be flatter now you need a little bit more um pointing ability because the the guy that's got the flatter sails and it's

[00:33:35] just it was pointing high in this dead flat water you know he's going to be higher maybe he won't be faster but higher and equal this is going to get you around the course faster so can

[00:33:45] I ask you then that when you're on a top boat is it that they they see that coming the boats further down the uh to pack tend to take a little bit longer to realize that I think you're uh exactly

[00:33:57] right is it it's it's time in the boat and also like I said when you were practicing with somebody else you're writing notes down on what what was working and certain you're writing everything

[00:34:07] down to what the waves are so now you've you've you come into a new condition the top boats are going to know how to adjust their their sails and sail the boat and do it you know is

[00:34:18] they're going to be going for more more speed or they're going to be going for uh you know higher the what happens often is a boat that's not in tune with their the changes as much you might be

[00:34:30] they might figure it out eventually they say wow all of a sudden we're not pointing very high and they're they're trying to figure out what's what's wrong and then they might make then

[00:34:39] you might say oh I know I know what we got to do we got to you know we've got the sails trimmed for when it's choppy and now it's flat but they spent time in that diagnosis mode

[00:34:50] and meanwhile the top boats are already probably predicted they could see it coming there those adjustments and they're dialed in and they're going yeah um they've got everything right from the main the main is right that the jib is right maybe they've inhaled it

[00:35:05] the jib a little bit and gotten it flatter you know you can get that uh that jib in a lot more than you think so um just recap then uh the differences you see are all the improvements that people make

[00:35:18] are in getting the sails sails to work together as a pair adapting to conditions of changes in the weather or current dynamics faster than anybody else uh what else what else

[00:35:30] do you see well obviously there's you know the wind is shifting so you have to have a system that's going to tell you you know the wind we've come into a knock you know because you might

[00:35:40] be looking at the uh it's your compass heading and say okay we're down five and down 10 did you change the sails at all if you didn't change anything and you know you know it's a real

[00:35:49] it's a real knock that has got to be dealt with immediately too so what's happening on top boats the top boats i mean there there's a person in in charge of of of saying we're down five

[00:36:02] we're down 10 um you know there's also people on the rail they're calling the puffs i just sail with someone they're telling me lift in five you know how much that helps the skipper

[00:36:13] yeah or or there's a knock coming you know and they how do they how do they know it there's just folks that so you've got a lift coming in five uh five boat lengths or five seconds

[00:36:23] five seconds is what i usually so then do you start to head up does that give you a pleasure head up to anticipate it is that what you right right so the the skipper doesn't have to go

[00:36:32] through uh any period of time that he's down on the wind yeah i mean yeah so he can go into pinch mode a little bit knowing it's coming knowing it's coming yeah and then when it comes then it's oh now

[00:36:45] now continue to come up with it until you you're on the wind yeah yeah so it's that little that that doesn't seem like much but that increment could be you know 10 feet better than the guy next

[00:36:57] to you well all of a sudden you know what i mean you do that three times and you and you got about like yeah yeah so so anticipation on having a crew ready to react to shifts yeah yeah and not only

[00:37:11] that but your crew can also be telling you what's going ahead of the boats above you and and ahead of you so they might know that there's going to be a lift in five but looking the same

[00:37:24] the guy that's uh you know 10 boat lengths ahead of us he all of a sudden he's lifted so having people who can spot that and then also knowing what to do um just so it's not just

[00:37:37] it's information you're acting you can actually use is right is there a leg of the course that you look forward to you feel really comfortable whether you know i know how to do

[00:37:46] downwind or my favorite part of the of the course is the upwind first leg because if you nail that makes the rest of the race easy that is where i uh when i was younger that's where i

[00:37:58] thrived that was um you know getting the off the line keeping your lane in the lifted tack or towards the direction you want to go if you know you want to get out to the left side

[00:38:10] you got to be able to hold this lane so it starts is very key to be able to implement a good weather leg because you can race your own leg but um it's where it sets the tone for the entire race

[00:38:24] i got into um you know windsurfing and then that put a lot of emphasis on reaching and downwind then so i've become more balanced you know across the course so i i now can sail and this

[00:38:37] is why i like sailing the viper in the melchus 15 is there there's so many gains to be made downwind because it's like sailing upwind going downwind so when i get a big lift downwind i'm jiving

[00:38:50] onto the onto the header because you know it's an ace in the right asymmetrical boat yeah so you have to think you know in reverse so that again is um paying attention and you got to

[00:39:04] watch your numbers and um upwind or downwind both ways yeah okay both ways so let's go back to the you talk about stopped presumably i guess it depends on how the how long that first leg is in

[00:39:18] distance um the start it's got to be crucial to um to being to being in the top five at the top mark you have a bad start you have no chance if you if you're first off the line doesn't

[00:39:32] necessarily mean you're going to be first of the first of the top mark i know i'm stating the obvious here right just uh just actually i'm curious about you talked about knowing which

[00:39:41] side of the course you want to be on um you must spend a lot of time um preparing for the for that for the start in the first leg so knowing you presume you go through all the

[00:39:55] line biases and which side of the course and current and you've done all that right before you've even got to the first couple of minutes yeah um you've you've done all your

[00:40:06] decision making before the start you know let's say well i want to go to the right but the pin end is really favorite so now you've got a quandary it's like okay do i want to you know have

[00:40:18] you know a two or three boat length jump by starting at the right end to the line or do i want to just go ahead and and start for instance at the boat and go right the way

[00:40:28] you all want to go right um we run into this in the Wednesday night race here sometimes where you might want to go right but the pin's way favorite so can you start on the pin and you can you finally

[00:40:41] in going right and that's that's uh that's a big question yeah it doesn't always work because you could get a guy above you to held you out to the left hand corner right and that's exactly

[00:40:52] the opposite place you wanted to go so all these things have to be taken into account um i um i oftentimes you know but you know pre-start maneuvers um kind of make my decision

[00:41:06] whether i want to go you know you know up the line a little bit so i have a little bit more ability to get to the right side and so i'll you know with a with a you know 45 seconds to a minute

[00:41:18] yeah and do i want to i want to find a spot that might be able to start at that looks like is a place that i won't be stuck you know uh going the wrong way for any length of time yeah

[00:41:32] so Doug Stryker one of the earlier uh one of our podcasts talked about um about you know which end of the line you choose and he was interesting that that even if the the boat end is slightly favored he felt especially locally here that's already congregates

[00:41:50] and he felt the smart boats will then actually go to the pin end of the line right which may be unfavored but it but it's clear out because there's a scrum of j105s moving slowly as they do right

[00:42:04] so i thought that was quite interesting well i think um that's the advantage of coming across the starting line on port looking for your spots because if uh if i'm down at the um

[00:42:16] you know the pin and i tack at two minutes to go and i'm come now i'm coming back and i'm looking at the boat looking at that congregation you know i'm probably not going to get in that kind in that

[00:42:32] group right you're going to just tack underneath of them yeah yeah let them fight it out some of those guys are going to get a better start than me but they're going to be a lot of guys that

[00:42:42] are going to get pushed out in a bad spot you know have to tack away after the start you know whatever it might be so um and you can you can make that determination so you know there's plenty of people

[00:42:55] that just line up at two minutes to go and they just drift with their sails laughing and they're waiting waiting for the start you know and so um you might as well you keep moving in

[00:43:05] that's with a keel boat right keep keep the boat moving exactly with a keel boat you it's even more critical than uh ray wolf talked about um being coming back towards making his

[00:43:17] approach the line uh earlier than other people because he wanted to keep didn't want to have a last literally a last minute maneuver right and want to be able to be able to accelerate so even if

[00:43:27] the men going slower that as you curve in presumably and then accelerate to the last right so he's leaving him uh you know he wants to be moving too and he's gonna you know

[00:43:39] baby tack into a spot that he can now tack into and keep the boat moving maybe he doesn't have to go straight ahead and wait and stop the boat yeah you know what I mean yeah and that's and that's the

[00:43:47] key so you're gonna come up you're gonna come across and you're going to um uh line that spot it's gonna got it would be perfect uh to keep your boat moving you know keel boat situation

[00:43:59] that's critical in a dinghy no you can come right up underneath somebody and stop the boat yeah you can accelerate right and then you accelerate into the hole um that you've created

[00:44:10] and hopefully kept yeah so and there's a lot there's a lot of things to do there but we all get into all that on how to keep that whole I know you've spent a lot of time on j105s and something I was

[00:44:21] you know i'm new to the j105 so um I was curious about was that when I first started going upwind I was trying to stick to the um to the vmg polliners basically which we're telling

[00:44:34] me that uh you know you your apparent angle should be 25 degrees that's the thing pretty narrow but then anybody who came in the boat said no you're you've got a foot you've got a foot

[00:44:44] a lot more than um that I was thinking yeah I think the um part of the reason on a j105 where you might feel like you're footing more than you normally would want to it's you only have a

[00:44:57] little jib up there um you know that's that's that's getting you giving you a certain amount of power in the uh in in the boat in the rig and oftentimes to get everything out of that you have to be down

[00:45:12] off the wind just you know a little bit to get the boat moving and maybe you can now then after that maybe you can creep it up but um generally the boat has to be has to be moving because

[00:45:25] it's easy in a boat like that to to kind of choke it off yeah and you know be too high you know want to be high and slow um or sometimes it's even okay to be high and low especially

[00:45:37] if you're in a big lift which that's another thing I always tell people it's like you know take advantage of this lift by by footing towards the next header so you know it's

[00:45:48] something I learned a long time ago just you know really shifty conditions and it gets uh you know you you you tack into a big lift you know from from a header to a big lift it's it's okay

[00:46:01] if I'm not going high high high but you just want to go fast fast fast and that requires you to be on the low edge not the high edge tell till still streaming back yeah isn't it not like you're not

[00:46:10] you're not going low low you're just you're just a couple degrees I'm gonna I've got to try that because you know you get greedy right okay let's ride this lift let's ride it up yeah yeah start

[00:46:20] to start to pinch but that's not the you should be footing off yeah no no pinching in the lift no pinching in the lift pinching in the hole and uh in the header so if you can't tack

[00:46:30] and there's someone you know you got your trapped or whatever pinch pinch pinch because then that then maybe the lift's coming and now you want to be higher up right so then when you do get

[00:46:39] the lift you're you're able to yeah to uh you know just have a higher spot already Scott there's so much to uh there's so much to learn from you once again thank you so much brilliant much

[00:46:49] appreciate the time really enjoyed this uh absolutely I enjoyed it too thank you so much see you out in water you bet see you in the water